Why U.S. Insurance is the Most Expensive

Many people will agree that the USA is able to provide some of the finest medical treatment in the world. The healthcare infrastructure in the United States is vast and of an extremely high quality. However, the excellence of service and high standard of treatment comes with an expensive price tag; a price tag that is frequently too high for many people to bear alone. If you live outside North America, or are planning to move, consider getting international health insurance excluding coverage in the United States. This will significantly reduce your premiums as well as the overhead cost of medical insurance.

Many countries around the world are able to offer healthcare services that are of a similar standard to those offered in the United States. However these countries usually do not charge the same high prices as the United States. One reason is the rampant inflation that is associated with healthcare services in the USA. Medical inflation is rising faster than any other service sector, which simultaneously strains healthcare providers, insurers, and patients.

The USA currently spends trillions every year on healthcare services. The high expenditure on healthcare services concurrently increases healthcare for individuals and families. The increase in cost does not mean a drop in overall insurance coverage but it does mean that insurance premiums will be much more expensive. This is primarily due to federal healthcare initiatives, such as Medicaid and Medicare, which provides coverage to a large amount of low-income individuals by placing the financial burden on hospitals to recover their expenses. But why is healthcare and health insurance in the USA more expensive than anywhere else?

One of the reasons is that the United States government has no direct influence over healthcare services. There are only a limited number of government run hospitals in the USA, mostly veteran hospitals, and U.S. healthcare is predominantly a private business industry with increased profit goals. There have been ideas proposed in favor of more strict regulations on medical costs, funding, and insurance, but many of these have been rejected as being completely unfeasible.

No direct government involvement in the healthcare services industry has also resulted in the two largest contributing factors to high medical costs: medical malpractice lawsuits and profit gouging by medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and medical provision companies. With the prevalence of law suits directed at the medical sector, hospitals and medical institutions have a very real need to produce capital that can help them fight these injunctions. With regards to pharmaceuticals, drug prices in the United States are some of the highest in the world and there are only very limited controls on the price of medication compared to Canada.

The combination of these factors has lead to a very high cost of treatment. Insurance companies will therefore charge a much higher price for any policy that includes coverage in North America as a way to protect themselves from these high risks and costs. It is therefore advisable that if you live outside of the USA, think about a plan that excludes North America from your coverage. If you live inside the continental USA, dealing with these high costs alone is a potentially dangerous situation and the only real way to protect yourself from costly medical bills is through a health insurance policy.

1 COMMENT

This is exactly why me and my wife opted for a health insurance plans that excludes the U.S. as we are living full time in China and Hong Kong and only visit the U.S. for 30 days or less each trip, our policy still covers us while visiting the U.S.